This is part one in a three-part series, part two can be found here and the third part here.

Frequent visitors to my blog may be unaware of the fact that I am part of a Facebook group, one that was created to educate (and entertain) people interested in living in France (or indeed people that already live here). The group’s membership is mainly made up of ex-pats from the UK, Australia, America and other predominantly English-speaking territories. You, my frequent visitor, will be unaware of my membership of this group because, until now, I’ve never mentioned it. So there you go. Boom! Just rocked your world with that news haven’t I?

Anyway, back to the point in hand. I decided to help these poor people out, by trying to teach them how to play Belote – a tricky task as you will soon discover.

Belote, for the uninitiated, is a popular French card game played in groups of four, subdivided into teams of two. It’s a very competitive game played throughout France, in homes among friends, and in halls as part of serious tournaments. The first prize isn’t money, or a car, or a holiday to Benidorm. No, as a rule you win a ham. So any competitive vegetarians can stop reading now.

Oh and even if you come dead last they still give you some meat (chicken).

I’m going to do my best to help them and also you, my frequent visitor, learn how to play this fantastic game. Belote is a tricky beast to master, and that’s coming from someone who’s been playing for years, but hopefully this guide will give you a solid grounding.

I will try to make this as comprehensive and user-friendly as possible, I will also do my best to make it entertaining, but not at the expense of the learning experience and – let’s face it – there really are only so many jokes you can make about a card game (even a French one) before it gets tiresome.

So, as you may or may not be aware, there are two options when it comes to learning how to play Belote:

You can learn the way I learned and that’s to play with the natives. This will involve many hours of wine, fun, laughter and abuse as you fail again, and again to wrap your head around the rules. You will never forget the many, many occasions that you were subjected to a stream of angry French, as you caused your team to lose for the third consecutive time. The red glow that seemed to emanate from your partner’s eyes as you placed the wrong card down at the wrong time – again! – will haunt your dreams. But hey! It’s only a game right? At least that’s what you tried to explain to your partner, as his hands closed around your windpipe, and you desperately wished you had a better grasp of French or – as darkness crept into your vision, you began to faintly hear your long-deceased grandmother gently calling your name, and a bright light began to shine down on you from above – at least knew enough to say ‘Hey! It’s only a game, right?’

2. Or you can read a guide like this one…

So I will start this with the view that the person reading it has never played the game before, and wishes to play with friends who are similarly clueless as to the rules. So we will start with a breakdown of the cards, their names in French, what that ‘atout’ business is all about, and follow this with the rules, before wrapping the whole thing up with a breakdown of the scoring system.

THE CARDS, THEIR NAMES AND WHAT ‘ATOUT’ MEANS

So there may well be repetition of some things in this guide, as I will be going over the names of the cards you play with here, and then will reiterate that, again and again, further on. I cannot stress this enough – REPETITION IS A GOOD THING. This is not an easy game to master, so I’m trying to get the message across to you as best I can, by hammering it home, again and again.

Order Of Card Values If Played As Atout

Jack – the most powerful card in the game and called ‘valet’ in French.

Nine – second most powerful called (quelle surprise) ‘neuf’.

Ace – goes by ‘as’ over here (watch the spelling on that one)

Ten – simply ‘dix’.

King – is called ‘roi’

Queen – is called ‘dame’

Eight – You probably know where I’m going with this now but if not this is ‘huit’

Seven – Yes, it’s called ‘sept’.

Example – If opponent plays the 9 and you have the jack – you can take the 9 with your jack

Something to note is that if you have the king and the queen atout then this constitutes ‘Belote’ and will give you extra points (more on that in the points section later). Remember this applies even if YOU HAVE NOT CHOSEN THE ATOUT YOURSELF.

Order Of Card Values If Not Played As Atout

Ace

Ten

King

Queen

Jack

Nine

Eight

Seven

Example – If opponent plays 10 and you have the ace, you can take that ten with your ace – BUT ONLY IF IT IS OF THE SAME SUIT – UNLESS IS IT ATOUT AN ACE OF CLUBS WILL NOT BEAT A TEN OF HEARTS!

The suits themselves go by different names over here too, they are:

Hearts = ‘coeur’

Diamonds = ‘carreau’

Clubs = ‘trefle’

Spades = ‘pique’

So down to this atout business. As I said above, the cards follow that order only if they have been chosen as atout. Atout is effectively a trump card and can be used to take other players trump cards or – if during gameplay they place a card from a suit that you do not have a card from, then you can take that hand by ‘cutting’ their play. So for instance if someone plays the ace of hearts, and you don’t have any hearts then you can take this hand by playing something as lowly as a seven, as long as it’s atout – that’s how strong the atout is.

Atouts – where possible – must be played in ascending order e.g if the player to your left puts down the ten atout and you have a higher card – say the nine for instance – then you HAVE TO PLAY HIGHER. If you do not have a higher card e.g the player to your left places the ace atout, but all you have are the king and the eight, then you are free to choose which card you put down (this is known as ‘pee pee’ in France) – and always play your weaker hand if it is for the benefit of your opponents – your stronger card may well come in useful later on.

When playing non-atout cards these rules do not apply and you can play any cards you want. So if the player to your left plays the king of hearts, even if you have the ace of hearts you can play a lower card if you wish to do so BUT ONLY FROM THE SAME SUIT.

So that’s a bit about the values of the cards and atouts, let’s get down to some actual game-playing now…

GETTING STARTED

First things first, you need the right amount of players – how many’s that? Like so many other card games four is the magic number for Belote. There are variations that can be played with just two people but that’s somewhat advanced, and thus best left for another day, and another guide.

This group of four players is then divided into two teams of two, each member of each team must sit facing their partner, they cannot sit side by side. How you organise who plays with who is entirely up to you. If you play with the same group for quite a while you will begin to see who you play best with – this may not necessarily be the person you get on best with, or sleep with for that matter. I get my best results from playing with my French father-in-law, and yet I wouldn’t kiss him if you paid me.

So assuming you have your foursome, you now need to obtain a pack of cards. From this pack of cards you need to remove the two, three, four, five, and six from every suit. You should then be left with the following cards: ace, jack, king, queen, ten, nine, eight and seven.

This is what you should have left after removing the other cards

Make a mental note that this means there will be EIGHT CARDS FOR EVERY SUIT INCLUDING THE CHOSEN ATOUT’S SUIT. This might sound patronising but keeping this simple detail in your mind can be difficult during play, but is one of the key components to success in Belote.

Shuffle the deck and then have each of the players pick out a card. Whoever has the highest card will then have first choice of whether to pick the atout or not when play commences. Once this is done put the cards back together and then split the pile in two. Pass it to a player – NOT the player who gets first dibs though – and they must then rejoin the pile in the opposite order to the way it was originally split.

You must then deal out the cards – face down so that they are not visible – to each player. There are two ways of doing this, you can either deal out three cards to each player initially, and then two – so that each player is left with a pile of five cards – or you can do the reverse: two cards then three. All players should keep their cards hidden from each other at all times – this is especially applicable to each other’s partners – cheating is frowned upon, and treated quite harshly in France.

The dealer will then place the next card face up on the table so that all players can see it. This is – potentially – the atout card.

In the game your cards would not be visible – this is simply for illustrative purposes. As you can see above, you shouldn’t take atout as diamond, however your spade hand is very strong

Starting with the player who won the card pick at the beginning, and then proceeding anti-clockwise, each player can then decide whether or not they wish to play, take the atout, and get the game rolling. If nobody wishes to take the first card offered play will go back around, starting with the first person who declined the initial card. There is then the opportunity to make any other card in your hand the atout card.

If the initial card is of no interest to any player, and nobody’s hand is deemed to be strong enough to select another suit to be atout, then each player must signal this by saying ‘deux’. If all players say ‘deux’ then the whole process starts again – the cards are split by the last person who dealt and the player sitting to their right then resplits the pack – again in the opposite way to how it was originally split – and deals out the cards. This process will repeat until someone chooses the initial card or decides they have a strong enough contender in their own hand.

So let’s say that you think you have a strong enough hand – and are prepared to take on the card that has been left by all the other players, including yourself – you elect to choose another suit and name it – simply saying hearts, diamonds, spades or clubs aloud (to be correct, and especially if you are playing with the natives, then use the French version of this, it will impress them).

Here we see that you have selected the spade as the atout card. You have announced this to the table and the remaining cards have been dealt. Three to each of the other players and two to you. You now have a very strong hand – you picked up an extra atout with the seven and you also have Belote – the king and queen atout.

In this case – or in the case of the atout being chosen being the one initially placed – you take the card and the remaining cards are dealt as follows: you (or whoever chooses the atout) receive two cards, while all other players receive three cards each. There should be no cards left in the deck whatsoever – if there are, and it happens more often than you would think, then something has gone wrong and you need to ‘reset’.

But nothing has gone wrong! The atout is selected and play has commenced. The idea now is – generally – to sniff out the other players’ atouts, and thus take out the ‘threat’ they pose to your game. I will go into more detail on the various ways you can do this in a later section, but for now we’ll stick with the basics.

So let’s say you selected the atout and you are in control of the game i.e it’s your turn to play. If you have the jack and the nine in your selection then you should play one of these – it does not matter which one because as noted earlier, these are the two most powerful cards and will ‘defeat’ all other atout. If your opponents have atout THEY MUST PLAY THEM. Ideally this initial play – let’s say of the jack – will bring you three of their atouts. So now you know there are four left – if you deduct your nine that means three. You should then play the nine and, hopefully, you will then take the remaining atouts.

It was (ideally) your turn to play first, and you have played your jack. The player on your right has followed your play and put down the ten, your partner has played the eight and your other opponent has no atouts – as you can tell by their playing of a low value card that is of a different suit. You have four atouts left in your hand – you have three that you have just won, in front of you on the table, leaving just one atout to find – unfortunately it’s a biggie – the nine (note how I have put all cards in their corresponding suits? it greatly aids gameplay).

With the table now clear of atouts you are free to carry on playing the game as you would a normal card game. Thus if you play a king of hearts you will lose it if your opponent plays a ten, or an ace of hearts. But don’t forget, normal rules are back in play and so a nine is just back to being a plain old nine and is nothing special at all. Likewise a jack can be defeated by a queen, a king, a ten and an ace and is not the all powerful card it is when it is atout.

So let’s just imagine however, that there’s still an atout in play and, worst of all, your opponents have the best one – the nine. At this early stage in your playing you may not know who has it but, with experience, you will soon know who has what, and how to get it out of them. It’s not magic they use, these wily old French people, who seem to have an uncanny ability to figure you out – no, they just have great memories.

So there’s a rogue atout out there and it isn’t yours – you now have to be wary of losing your ace, or other high value cards to these atout because – say if you play the ace of spades and one of your opponents doesn’t have anything in that suit – they will cut your play with their atout and it’s bye-bye ace of spades!

You’ve decided to flush out the remaining atout and have chosen to play the seven. You don’t need to use a higher card as there is only one remaining atout and, whether it’s in your partner’s hand or that of your opponent, IT MUST BE PLAYED – so why give away points? The player on your right plays the nine, as they have to, your partner plays the jack (Always give away your weakest card if you have to to your opponents, and so this shows that he has a very good hand if this is the weakest cad he has to play) and the remaining opponent then plays a ten (if your partner is winning a hand – and you don’t have a card in the winning suit – ALWAYS give them a high value card – unless you are saving certain cards for a better time).

The reverse is applicable too though, for instance if you start with a decent handful of atouts – let’s say five (always a nice amount) – and you end up with two spare after claiming all the rest. Then you can keep them to cut your opponents with when they play something you don’t have anything in the same suit as (always hope to cut an ace or a ten though – nothing worse than being ‘flushed out’ by a seven).

The player who took the previous hand with the nine has played hearts, your partner has followed with a king and your other opponent has played an ace. As you do not have a heart you have no option but to cut this hand with your queen – saying ‘Belote!’ while doing so. You now take this hand and control is back with you. Note the two small piles of cards in each corner, these are each team’s respective ‘winnings’.

An additional word on cutting – if your partner plays a card that you do not have something of YOU DO NOT HAVE TO CUT HIM IF HE IS WINNING (see information on ‘maitre’ further on). This is something I can’t urge you enough to remember, unless it’s tactically advantageous to you (e.g: if you have figured out that by cutting your partner’s winning hand you will claim your opponent’s (yet to be played) ace) then DO NOT DO THIS. There is further information on this in the part 2 of this guide.

If your opponent plays a card however, in a suit that you do not have anything in, then YOU HAVE TO CUT. Don’t be surprised either – if you cut the play after your partner and one of your opponents, but before your other opponent – to see your other opponent hastily shuffling his hand and laying down something of much, much lower value than, say, the ace they had originally intended on playing.

It’s your turn again and you’ve played your ace of diamonds. As there are no other atouts left in your opponent’s hands you are “maitre” – guaranteed to win. So your partner has given you the most points he can in that suit – the ten. As you can see the player on your right has no diamonds and so has given you a low-value card.

You may also hear the French referring to themselves as ‘maitre‘ or their partner or another player may ask if they are ‘maitre‘. This simply means that they are winning the hand, even if they have played something as trivial as a seven of hearts – and even if that is not atout – IF NO OTHER PLAYER HAS A CARD IN THE SAME SUIT, AND ALL ATOUT HAVE BEEN PLAYED, A CARD AS INSIGNIFICANT AS A SEVEN CAN WIN A HAND.

Taking a gamble the ten of clubs is played, followed by the seven from the opponent on your right (as they don’t know who has the ace) your partner plays the queen and, unfortunately, your other opponent plays the ace, winning the hand and taking control of play.

You should really try keep spare atouts as last resorts, once the other atouts have been ‘sniffed out’ and always try to keep one till the very end if you can as this will guarantee you win the last hand, and give you more points (more on this further down).

So here the player to your left has played the king, you have to play your eight, his partner plays the eight of clubs (showing they only have low-scoring cards left, if they had anything better this is the point they would give it as – working out from the cards that have been played – their partner is maitre here and guaranteed to win the hand) and your partner plays the seven.

One final note on atouts regards Belote – or rather if you have the cards that constitute it – the king and queen of the chosen atout suit. If you do, when you play them you must say the word ‘BELOTE!’ when you place it down, it doesn’t matter if you play the king or queen first. When you place the second one of these cards down, again whichever one it doesn’t matter, you must then say ‘RE-BELOTE!’. It’s unlikely that your friends or family will pick you up on this if you play them – and penalising your lack of vocalisation of this by refusing you the points is also highly unlikely – however in competitive environments (should you reach those dizzy heights, and potentially win the first prize of…ham!) they may be more severe. Plus the French will love hearing you say it.

The last hands are guaranteed to be yours – there are only two atout in play, and you have them. Some French players, at this point, lay the atout down on the table and the other players throw their cards in. We, however, will play the last two hands out. So this hand is yours and you regain control and retain it for the final hand…

It’s all over! As you have taken the last hand – as well as having Belote – you will get a points bonus. Ten extra points for the last hand and twenty extra points for having Belote. This may not sound like much but can often be the difference between winning and losing a game.

So that’s a general overview of how to play the game, I’m sure you’ve already got questions (and I don’t blame you) but hopefully by playing the game, and reading my other blog posts on the subject, you will be able to get stuck in.

So now one last word on the most puzzling aspect of all for some – which until recently included myself – how to tally the points…

SCORING A GAME OF BELOTE

So the values of cards are:

ATOUT

Jack = 20

Nine = 14

Ace = 11

Ten = 10

King = 4

Queen = 3

Seven = 0

Eight = 0

‘Belote’ – King and Queen atout held TOGETHER by any one player = 20 points

NON-ATOUT

Ace = 11

Ten = 10

King = 4

Queen = 3

Jack = 2

Nine = 0

Eight = 0

Seven = 0

10 points are also awarded for ‘Dix de der‘ which is the winning of the very last hand.

WINNING – AND LOSING – SCORES

You must have 82 points to win a game – minimum.

If you chose the atout and you do not meet the 82 point minimum the other team wins and will receive 162 points (182 if they have the Belote as well). This is known as ‘Dedans‘.

If you do the minimum then the other team gets your points (162) minus yours (e.g 162 – your 82 points means they get 80 points, or if you score 92 points then 162-92 = 70 and so on).

If you/your opponents choose the atout and win every hand then you/they win 252 points (272 with Belote) this is known a ‘Capot‘. This result differs at competitive levels (or where you are playing it with the natives) where the points you are awarded are lowered to 162 points (182 with Belote).

You need 1,000 points to win the game at competitions/playing with French natives (though this can vary).

If you are playing using the online app (more on that in a later blog) then this is lowered to 501.

So there you have it. I hope you have enjoyed reading my initial guide, and didn’t find it too tasking or wearying. You may now feel free to read my other Belote guides, where I will be delving a bit deeper into Belote tips, hints, good and bad hands and how to use the online app.

Estate agents and agence immobilieres, one based in the UK, the other in France. They ostensibly perform the same function: to sell your house in the quickest possible time or, alternatively, to help you find that dream home.

There are however a few key differences between the two…

Average Age:

Estate Agent: 20 – 30

Agence Immobiliere: 60 – 70

Location of business premises:

Estate Agent: Centrally located in heart of city/town/village

Agence Immobiliere: Centrally located in heart of city/town/village

Likelihood of finding dogs on said business premises:

Estate Agent: Very Low

Agence Immobiliere: At least one.

Will they smoke on said business premises?

Estate Agent: Smoking on business premises is illegal in the UK (so not while you are there)

Agence Immobiliere: Smoking on business premises is illegal in France (so not while you are there and occasionally while you are there)

What’s the lighting like inside said business premises?

Estate Agent: Bring sunglasses

Agence Immobiliere: Bring a torch

How they will greet you the second time you enter said business premises:

Agence Immobiliere: Placement on website of agency, discussion in queue at bakers, discussion in queue at butchers, discussion in queue at gunshop, discussion whilst out walking dog (s).

Number of Photographs that will be taken of the properties:

Estate Agent: a minimum of 10 or so photographs, depicting the interior, the exterior and everything that could possibly show the property in its best light.

Agence Immobiliere: A minimum of 1 or so photographs, sometimes the same photograph, 3 times, showing the same aspect, just slightly closer each time.

Will the agent ever take photographs as if they were taken by someone who has had a restraining order imposed on them and is not allowed within 100 ft of the property and thus has to resort to taking photographs when the house is fully shuttered on an overcast day from quite a distance away?

Estate Agent: Never

Agence Immobiliere: All the time

Will you move furniture around to get a better shot?

Estate Agent: Yes

Agence Immobiliere: No

Will they move people/animals out of shot?

Estate Agent: Yes

Agence Immobiliere: Sometimes

Have they mastered the art of taking a photo in a room with a mirror without appearing in said mirror?

Estate Agent: Yes

Agence Immobiliere: No

You are selling a house for over 200k, do you think people will want to see more than 3 photographs, one of which is of a bush?

Estate Agent: Yes

Agence Immobiliere: No

Do you think this looks like a good photo to have on your website?

Estate Agent: No

Agence Immobiliere: No

So why is it there Agence Immobiliere? Don’t you understand the term ‘correct photo orientation’?

Estate Agent: (Sniggers)

Agence Immobiliere: (shuffles feet)

I don’t know what you are laughing at Estate Agent, here’s one of yours:

Estate Agent: (shuffles feet)

Agence Immobiliere: (Sniggers)

Do lots of your properties look like they are haunted?

Estate Agent: No

Agence Immobiliere: 75%

If you are selling a property who will accompany the prospective buyer?

Estate Agent: Ostensibly the estate agent will arrange all viewings, with the promise that you will not interact with the prospective buyer at all. In reality they will text you to tell you that they have ‘gotten held up’ and ‘could you be a gem and show the house for me?’. The buyer will then arrive 30 minutes late (or early) because the estate agent hasn’t relayed the correct information to them. This will only happen 8 out of 10 times though.

So we come, at last, to the final day of the festival celebrating the Auld Alliance. As you read this the people who came to entertain and enthral the crowds will be packing up their kilts, deflating their bagpipes and making sure there’s enough fuel in their cars to make the long journey back to Scotland.

Except for the people who actually live here that is – they’ll just walk 100 yards to their house.

The festival co-coordinators have been lucky in their timing – the weather has been glorious throughout – which has brought the crowds and, crucially, made the crowds thirsty. My plan for next year’s festival is simple – buy lots and lots and lots of alcohol and fizzy pop and then sell it. Then the following year I will be blogging from my yacht.

If only.

Anyway, enough waffle from me, have a gander at the last lot of photographs…

No idea what the sales tactic was here? Perhaps trying to target that Planet Of The Apes/Scottish Highland Fan demographic?

Took me right back to Braveheart…’Hold!!!!’

There was seldom anyone actually monitoring this stuff, so if someone wanted to flip out – say someone who had two kids and was stressed out on a hot sunny day – then this would be the perfect/worst opportunity to do so.

These guys were trying to get volunteers to take part in the ancient game of ‘Embarrass yourself in front of your friends by getting them to try to throw a heavy weight over a giant limbo pole, fail miserably and then have to watch you do it expertly while your girlfriend looks on and sighs to herself’

It seems ‘almost’ feasible when you look at it…

Having said that even the sol called ‘experts’ messed up a few times.

Having to lower the pole…never a good sign. Still at least you aren’t doing it in front of crowds of people….

Pah! He can nearly touch it with his hand now! Amateurs* (*I still didn’t try)

Load of Knight Templar chilling out. I don’t know what the plural for a load of Knights Templar is and I’m not googling it either.

Look at the size of those two dogs! We were told they used to hunt bears, wolves and….

ENGLISH MEN!!!! RUN AWAY THEY’VE CAUGHT MY SCENT!!!

This looks so authentic, but she was reaching down for her iPhone.

First mismatched wresting match – the guy on the right weighed half what the guy on the left did.

Now this was clearly only ever going to end one way…

Or was it….? (he did actually let the little fellow win)

This is a bit more like it…

Yep, this one was a very evenly matched….match.

This was one of many wrestling matches between the professional Highland Wrestling Team and a group of boy (and girl) scouts who were in the area. No prizes for guessing the outcome here….

So, as Porky Pig used to say ‘the the the that’s all folks’ I hope you’ve enjoyed looking at the photographs I’ve taken during the festival. I’ve no doubt that this time next year, when the streets of my village ring out with sounds of bagpipes, I’ll be back to cover it again. Have a good one y’hear ken?

Do you like bagpipes? They are great at new year aren’t they? Really making ‘Auld Lang Syne’ go with a bang, if you are lucky enough to have them playing live as you see in the next year. The rest of the time though, if I’m being honest, I can take them or leave them. Not much chance of avoiding them today though.

My ears still hurt.

Anyway feast your eyes, and I will spare your ears, on the pictures I took of the many, many battalions of bagpipe players. It may not be to everyone’s tastes, but there’s no denying that these people are awesome when they gather en-masse…

So for those who don’t know my village is twinned with a Scottish town called Haddington. This is to celebrate the ‘Auld Alliance’ between France and Scotland, and to further celebrate this every year, for three days, the Scottish descend upon our little village.

There are many ways to learn the French language: go to college, listen to audio tapes, watch all Luc Besson’s back catalogue sans subtitles or get arrested for smuggling drugs into France – you’ll have plenty of time to learn the lingo then.

But for other, less obvious ways to pick up the language then read on as I – a fully fledged resident of the country for a whopping four months! – impart my meagre advice.

POWER RANGERS

Yes, you read that right, Power Rangers, the kid’s TV show featuring teenagers in lycra body suits that leave little to the imagination, fighting badly dressed aliens in poorly plotted episodes.

My French partner gave me this advice when it came to learning the lingo: ‘Just watch the news in the morning for half an hour, it’s what we did when we were learning English, and we soon picked it up’. I immediately dismissed this as I find the news A) Depressing and B) Boring. So I picked Power Rangers as an obvious alternative to this.

Yes for an hour-or-so a day (pah! more than the 30 minutes I would have spent on the news) I watch these 7 – 12 (I’ve lost track of how many there are) young kids fight the bad guys while talking in a context that I can understand. Each day I pick up more and more snippets and the phrases filter in. Not only that it gives me some daddy and daughter time, as she loves watching it with me too.

OK, OK, so I am now more prepared to respond to an international invasion by poorly designed monsters (and then fight them in a quarry/car-park/industrial estate), than I would be to say, discuss the Geo-political situation in the Middle East. Have you read any of my other blogs? That was clearly never going to happen anyway.

PLAY ONLINE GAMES WITH THE FRENCH

I play Belote. I play it a lot (copyright Phil, 2017). It’s available to play for ‘free’ on Facebook. I say free like that, in inverted commas, because they give you an initial amount of 2000 chips for nothing and, while you can get free chips everyday, there’s a definite sales tactic pushing you to actually invest in large amounts of chips.

Don’t do that, just get good at it.

Anyway, playing with the French is great because, as well as an array of emojis to indicate your mood at any given time, there’s also a text input option. This small window enables you to converse with your fellow players. And by converse I mean insult.

Yes, the only time this small text window is used is for insults to be hurled at other players. You will quickly learn what the following words are in French: Stupid, idiot, useless, dickhead, fuckwit etc etc.

Your education doesn’t stop at words though as the French are more than capable of string whole phrases full of insults together too, such as:

I went through a phase, back in 2009, of buying vintage Transformers. I had a man-cave, in the loft. Then I had kids. Bye-bye man-cave, bye-bye Transformers. Something good that came from this though – apart from having kids of course, ahem – is that in the brief period between buying and selling these items, they had increased in value and thus I turned a tidy profit.

I’m applying the same rationale to vintage video games, I’m buying them with a view to selling them at a later date for a profit. They are also much easier to store as they are just games in tidy little cases, not robots with 18 legs that will break if you look at them funny.

One of the great things about using eBay France is that – surprise, surprise – all the item descriptions are in French. Thus you will increase your knowledge of words you didn’t know you would ever have a use for, but that can come in handy in many circumstances.

A word of warning though, when selling your own items you may be tempted to use Google Translate for the item description, this will get the point across, but a true French person will spot it a mile away. One item I sold led to me conversing with the buyer (or ‘acheteur’ as they are called, ooh! Look at me!) in order to garnish them with more information, and he actually told me that I ‘Could respond in English if I preferred’.

DON’T BE A COWARD AND GET YOUR FRENCH PARTNER TO DO IT – TAKE THE ITEMS YOU SELL ON EBAY TO THE POST OFFICE YOURSELF

Yes, pretty self explanatory this one because, if like me you live with a native French person the temptation is to just coast along and get them to do all the ‘hard work’ i.e: interact with actual French people. You must resist this and force yourself to ‘get out there’.

It may sound like a scary proposition, but once you start doing this it gets easier, a bit like taking the training wheels off your bike. It also helps that more than likely the people you deal with at the post office will be the same people that deliver goods to your door, so you will recognise them, and they you.

The rewards you get from this kind of interaction are priceless. My favourite, this week anyway, was dealing with two different people at the post office on two different days. I had to return an item – to the UK – as it was faulty. But I first had to get the costing for it, then notify the seller, who would then reimburse me, and then I would be able to post it.

Two different interactions over two days with two different, and very helpful, French people, with little to no confusion on either side. All under the watchful eye of the work-experience boy who has picked a VERY bad week to be stuck in a not-particularly-well air-conditioned room.

Item successfully posted, language-skills and confidence boosted.

GO OUT TO THE SHOPS AS OFTEN AS YOU CAN AND TALK TO PEOPLE

This is not difficult for me, I have two kids, and they seem intent on eating their own body weight in bread, biscuits and fruit each day and drinking enough smoothies each week to drown a herd of cattle in.

When I say ‘talk to people’ here, I don’t mean strike up a deep, meaningful conversation – let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet! But you can certainly pick up on the little things, the social niceties.

Also just looking around and listening to other people while you are queuing is a great way to improve your lingo-skills. You will have a lot of time to do this in French supermarkets as, for some reason, they seem to abhor the thought of putting more than two people on the tills at any one time – even though our local Intermarche has an army of staff members.

Even just reading the different signs, leaflets, posters etc will aid you in your training. Does that sound patronising? Sorry if it does but this is the thing you must remember – everything you read, hear or see can help you learn, everything. Just keep at it, it will get better.

How do you like that for a title, eh? But down to business, why would anyone, with half a brain, spend a gloriously sunny Sunday watching one of our bovine friends waddling around, keenly anticipating a fresh, steaming cow-turd being delivered?

Because you can win a car if it craps in the right spot.

Yes, you read that right. You win a car. If a cow craps in the right spot.

Don’t believe me? Then have a look at this:

Just when I thought I’d seen every bizarre game going, the French come up with a lotto game involving cow shit. You pay your 5 Euros, you take your ticket with the randomly assigned numbers, and you cross your fingers and hope that Lady Luck (or should that be Muck?) is with you.

There are many prizes to be won – TVs, day trips, home cinema gear etc – but the big draw is obviously the car. I could not, for the life of me, work out how they would justify this. How can a lotto game generate enough revenue, in a fairly small village, to cover the cost of a car AND turn a profit? How big is this field?

Also, as someone pointed out, what if the cow shit covers more than one grid? Will the winners have to car-share?

There are so many questions regarding this game, none of which were answered on the day. Do you want to know how they worked out the winners? Have a look at this board:

That’s cleared that up then hasn’t it?

No, not at all.

It looks like hell for someone with a morbid fear of Sudoku puzzles. I think whoever came up with this looks at the Enigma code machine as ‘child’s play’. I stared at it, and stared at it but it made less and less sense to me. But after 30 minutes I think I did start to see some sharks swimming around a sunken ship*.

We were told by the guy who deciphers this numerical-bollocks that we were ‘quite close’ to winning the day trip. What ‘quite close’ constituted with regards to all those numbers and a big steaming pile of cow faeces is anyone’s guess.

‘When weel zees cow take a sheet? Ah ‘ave been standing ‘eer for an hour!’

Seriously, how do you plan a game based on cow dumps? You wouldn’t want to have everyone standing around in the blazing hot sun, waiting for Daisy’s sphincter to deliver the goods, only for it to remain resolutely shut. I’m obviously showing up my glaring lack of knowledge in this area, and can only apologise (note to self, research cow’s bowel movements ASAP). I can only assume that the farmers have a few tricks up their sleeves.

Either that or they just pop them full of industrial strength laxatives, and then shove them out on to the field.

Note: electric wire – the only thing standing between the crowd, and a dowsing of cow-shit.

I was informed by my partner that there had been three rounds of this cow-poo fun during the day, and that they had sold three thousand tickets. So I then understood how they got the money for the car. We had arrived for the final round, not wanting to spend all the day watching this ‘entertainment’. Also because the final round was the round where you could win the car, and I wanted to win the car.

Who doesn’t want to win a car?

It dawned on me that narrating a game involving cows taking a dump was a horrible job. The DJ made this plain with his terrible dialogue. My French isn’t perfect, but when you’re complimenting a cow for running for approximately three seconds, you know you’re in trouble.

He perked up though, when the cow actually did have a dump:

Two men, looking at a cow turd.

There was further excitement caused when the turd in question seemed to be covering two grids – perhaps a car-share was indeed on the books. The chap who checks the poo, who had already called another chap to check the poo, then had to call in the top, top man to check the poo:

Now there are three of them – and one of them has a measuring tape.

They seemed to be some disagreement on the placement of said poo, so they then used a scientific technique known around the world as ‘Walking away and standing in the distance so that we look like we now what we are doing’. They also started using a measuring tape – you wouldn’t want to borrow that afterwards would you?

So if you stand there, and I stand here, we’ll look really professional so then hopefully, when they announce that the winner is the mayor, nobody will complain.

They finally made a decision and announced the winner. They read the numbers of the winning ticket out in reverse, thus making my already fragile mind, all-but spent from trying to make sense of the number-grid-from-hell, start to ooze out of my ears.

We didn’t win.

But, as Jim Bowen used to say, let’s have a look at what we could have won:

Stupid bloody cow, shitting in the wrong bloody place….

*That’s a joke from the 90s, remember those ‘Magic Eye’ posters? You stared at them for a while and then a fantastic image would slowly appear, depicting cats flying planes, or unicorns dancing in a golden stream. Or, if you are me, absolutely nothing except a load of squiggly lines.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I first saw this: an Aldi in my new French village! Tucked away in amongst all the boulangeries, brasseries and other things beginning with ‘B’ was this delightful example of German budget-shopping. OK, so it’s actually ‘tucked away’ on a small industrial estate, between lots of trucks and a public toilet, but that doesn’t paint a very pretty picture, so I lied.

The interior is just a cosy as the equivalents in the UK i.e: not cosy at all, and in fact very, very grim. They do the job though. Another fantastic similarity to the UK stores is the legendary aisle of crap. So named, by myself and many other Brits, for the random assortment of goods that can be found there. The aisle of crap is always, always located in the middle of the store.

But as pictures paint a thousand words, let me take you on a tour of this cultural gem.

I will also add words too, so therefore will be painting more than a thousand words per picture. Aren’t I nice?

In case you didn’t know, that little bit of French means ‘low prices’. Note presence of an item of Star Wars merchandise. Aldi stores are regularly checked by upper-management in disguise*, if the aisle of crap is found to be lacking in at least 48 different items of Star Wars merchandise, the manager of the store in question is fired on the spot.

*Generally a middle-aged man in three quarter-length, khaki shorts, who parks his 4×4 in the ‘parent and child only’ parking space at the front of the store, to make sure he fits in.

Nothing screams ‘keeping up with trends’ like Halloween decorations in May. Place your bets now, will they still be here this October?

Books that nobody wants to buy are a common theme in the aisle of crap. In the UK it’s generally Lego Annuals that have had their ‘Exclusive’ Lego Figure stolen, and thus are doomed to gather dust till they are incinerated. Here it’s this interesting oddity, with a title that translates as ‘Football, Champagne and Evening Glitter‘. What does that even mean?

There’s a hint of sunshine in the sky, and you know what that means don’t you? SOLAR LIGHTS!!!!! There are approximately 4,567 variants of these per store. If the quantities ever dip below this figure then the manager of the store – they and they alone – must immediately restock the quantities. They generally do this while the queue – which had been snaking past the tills and up the aisles – heads towards the fire-exit.

Can’t decide between completing a jigsaw puzzle, or putting up some curtains? Well, why should you have to? Here at Aldi, you can do both. So don’t delay, come in today and within mere minutes/hours* you can be sat next to a window, while your freshly purchased curtains blow in the gentle breeze, knocking your half-finished jigsaw all over the floor.

*Dependant on queue-length

I want a treasure box for the kids’ toys, but I also want to strim the grass…if only the option of finding both of the answers to these quandaries was relatively close together…

Another feature of Aldis-worldwide are the cabinets crammed full of electrical items, with prices that have been plucked from the sky. They occasionally reduce the prices, with equal disregard for any kind of structure:

Yes, just stick a 50 Euro yellow sticker on it, that’ll shift it*

*I have never, ever seen anyone buy from one of these cabinets, here or in the UK. I suspect the manager doesn’t actually have a key.

The gap between the…cage/basket/thingies. This achieves two things. 1. It allows you to have a ten-minute stand off with a lady with blue-rinsed hair, who has approached the gap with her trolley at the same time as you, and will not budge to let you through first. and 2. Allows the goods to make the leap from pillows, to car accessories.

Can you think of anywhere else where sets of knives and bed-linen live together in perfect harmony, side-by-side, on their basket/cage/thingies? Oh lord why can’t we?*

*That noise you just heard was Paul McCartney picking up his phone to call his lawyers.

‘There’s a bit of space here boss, what should we do with it? Put some more shoes there? Or maybe some insoles?’ ‘Sod that, stick those game packs there for the kids’

‘Daddy, daddy!’ ‘Yes darling?’ ‘Why is that lady naked?’

Kill my partner, deck the garden or go on holiday..Kill my partner deck the garden or go on holiday? Choices, choices. Yes if you have ever been struggling with the difficult choice between upgrading your garden/burying your partner under the new decking or going on holiday/disposing of your partner in suitcases then come to Aldi. You can do both here!

And here, at the end of the mockery the legendary Aldi queue awaits you. I know what you are thinking ‘maybe if I just go for my 37th tour of the store all those people will go away’. But they won’t go away, and you know what? More people will come. But they won’t open another till, not till the queue reaches critical mass (90% of people in queue over 70 years of age, and the queue now has its own Facebook page).

And they want you to go for another tour of the store, because by that time your resolve will have been weakened. So that swimming pool for 15 Euros? The one you wouldn’t buy before? Your son’s constant whining will have finally eroded your will, and you will take it, from a cage/basket/thingy, from the aisle of crap, and put it in your trolley.

Then you take your place in the now even longer queue, and look at all the other unmanned tills.

Ever had one of those ideas that you immediately regret? Like taking a moped out for a spin in Greece, without taking out insurance? Or maybe accepting that drink from the slightly too friendly guy, that keeps touching you? Or maybe going along to that ‘it’s not timeshare’ presentation, with the promise of a free trip on a glass-bottomed-boat afterwards?

Or how about deciding to man a stall at a French brocante, and taking along your three and six year-old children? Doomed to failure that idea, a non-starter if you are seeking a peaceful, profitable day.

Regrets aside this is what brought us to the huge brocante in our home village of Aubigny sur Nere today. I don’t use the term ‘huge’ lightly either. The brocante dominates the place to such a degree that traffic has been shut down throughout and there’s nary an alley, or sidewalk, that doesn’t have somebody selling something.

It’s not long before the kids start to act up (2 micro-seconds to be exact) and so, after the requisite amount of paternal caring (3 micro-seconds to be exact) I bugger off and leave the kids with their mother, Grandma and Grandad, and take a look at what there is for sale.

There are lots, and lots, and lots of interesting items, the usual medley of guns, knives, rusty farm tools, knives, dead animals and more knives. The stand-outs for me, today, are the following seven deadly deals…

MUSCULAR GNOME-IN-A-THONG

This combines two of my least favourite things: gnomes and (male) thongs. What’s going on here? What message are you sending out if you buy this and display it on your lawn? If I bought this, the Peter Stringfellow of garden ornaments, and put it outside I wonder how long it would be before the gendarme came knocking at my door?

Also note his accessory: alarmingly phallic mushroom – I don’t think the plan here is for him to get his fishing rod out. Well, obviously that depends on your interpretation of the term ‘fishing rod’.

I think the plan is actually for the placement of these in the garden to attract ladies inside, with the suggestion of virility, muscularity and…well, a great big mushroom. The only slight hitch will come if it actually works, and the ladies knock on the door only to find a 9-stone-man with a stoop and halitosis…

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD

GOAT/COW/SOMETHING’S FEET LAMP

Yes, yes so I’m clearly not an expert on what foot comes off what animal as the title of this segment demonstrates. I don’t know about you, but my first thought if I cut off this animals legs and started wondering what to do with them, would probably not be ‘Hmm, you know what? They’d make a lovely lamp’. What the hell do you buy to complement this? A buffalo leg coffee table? Or maybe a set of four deer-leg coat-hooks (they actually had those, in case you wondered what happened to Bambi)?

If nothing it’s definitely a conversation starter. A conversation that would probably start with ‘What the f*ck’s that?’

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD

NOT THE JOY OF SEX BOOK

My closest encounter with flagellation came in 2006, when I sat through the interminable The Da Vinci Code. You remember? That albino monk kept whacking himself when he thought he’d done something wrong. Or he might have enjoyed it, I forget which one.

Anyway, I didn’t realise it was actually a thing, or that there were even guide books for it. Needless to say, this was as close as I got, I really didn’t want to bump into one of my children’s teachers whilst ‘browsing’ Kinky Flagellations…t hat could open up a whole new world of problems. It would certainly make parent/teacher evenings interesting.

It’s nice that the producers of this book have thoughtfully included a warning that it is ‘not suitable for minors’. I would have thought the image on the front of the book, of the woman wearing S+M gear, and exposing her breasts would have done that job, but maybe that’s just me.

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD

JOHN CARPENTER’S THE THING DOG-LAMP

Fans of the seminal 1982 classic John Carpenter’s The Thing (to give it its full title) will recall the standout scene early on, where the husky dog that has seemed to be normal reveals its true colours, goes bat-shit crazy, and starts melting and attempting to assimilate the other dogs. If you could turn those melted dogs into a lamp, it would look like this.

At least, I think it’s supposed to be a lamp. My French isn’t yet at the stage where I can confidently pose the question ‘What the bloody hell is that supposed to be? Is it a lamp?’, but I’m getting there. Where does the light bulb go? In its mouth? Or are you supposed to finish that part off yourself? The mind boggles.

This…thing, won the award for the day of being, in my partner’s words, ‘The scariest thing I have ever seen’. It’s so like The Thing, in so many ways that I’m slightly regretting not buying it now. It looks like something trying (and failing) to look like something else, part-dog, part-lamp: all-horror. That being said, If I had have bought it I’m fairly certain that the kids would never enter the room that it was in…bah! Yet another reason to have purchased it!

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD

An Obviously Stolen Road Sign

This lady had some balls on her I can tell you. Stood there, in plain view of any passing gendarmes – of which there were many – with a stolen road sign. Just consider, for a moment, the lost motorist, adrift betwixt Gracay and Vatan. ‘How far is it now my love?’ grey-haired Elsa says to her beau, Francois ‘I don’t know’ he says, taking off his glasses and peering at the mound of upturned soil ‘Someone’s stolen the f*cking road sign’.

As uninteresting as the actual item is, it still garnered inquisitive looks and questions from passers-by. My partner heard her setting her stall out, price-wise, when she responded to a query on the matter with ‘let’s look at 350 euros, then we can start to talk about it’.

She also tried, unsuccessfully, to photo-bomb my picture when I took it. Like I said, she had balls.

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: NOT SURE, SHE DROVE OFF

COCK-SWITCH LAMP

‘Eh!’ said the lady who owned this ‘tasteful’ item when I took its picture ‘You take a photo of it, you buy it!’. I just hid behind my foreignness, gave her the thumbs up, and said it was ‘Tres bon!’.

When what I actually wanted to say was ‘How do you turn it on? By flicking the penis?’.

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD

GORILLA-MECHANIC WITH BOTTLE OF WINE/OIL & ADJUSTABLE WRENCH THING

So I’ve no idea on this one. What’s the purpose, the point, or the message? The bottle clearly used to be a bottle of wine, but now it’s been re-covered to look like a bottle of oil. With nuts at the bottom of it.

The wrench is touching the bottle, so is it implying that the two go together? Mechanics use oil and wrenches a lot?

What’s the gorilla got to do with anything? He looks like he wandered in from another set. Oh, and if you can’t see he’s also eating a banana. Is this the view of mechanics in France, that they are apes?

Maybe it’s an actual depiction of a ‘Monkey-wrench’ or…you know what? I’m giving up on this one. I personally think it’s someone’s art degree effort, probably means something really deep and cool. For me it just looked really weird, and faintly insulting for some reason.

With its roots in the Middle Ages, Mehun-sur-Yèvre is known as one of the “Most beautiful detours of France”, and is famous for its history with Joan of Arc. A walk through the cobbled streets of this quaint town brought us the arresting sight of the Venetian Carnival, a two day festival where the participants parade through the town adorned in ever more elaborate masks and gowns.

The procession eventually made its way to the majestic ruins of the castle of King Charles VII, and it was here, on a gloriously sunny Sunday, that I managed to capture most, if not all, of the participants…